Re: Community Input for the Maintenance and Revision of the Ada Programming Language

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

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"Johan Söderlind Åström" <johaa1993@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:9d4274d7-5ad1-42d0-8ec3-de822e28ec6c@googlegroups.com...
>> Unless a single array is effectively the entire memory usage of your 
>> program,
>> copying a single array is hardly "doubling the memory footprint". For 
>> most
>> programs, it is, in fact, an insignificant increase in the memory usage 
>> of the
>> program.
>
> If you have one array and then copy it, will you have two arrays or one 
> array?
> If somehow by logic you would happen to have two arrays after you copy, 
> will that be double as many arrays as before?
> Does a array have a memory footprint? If no then you are correct 0*2 = 0.

(BTW, I've been on vacation, thus the late answers.)

The above sounds like nonsense to me. Probably because you aren't specifying 
"object" or "type", and thus "array" by itself is unclear.

Assuming you mean "array object", yes, of course after copying you'll have a 
new array. Depending on what you're doing with it, that usually doesn't 
matter. (That is, most objects are just read.) And in the situation that you 
were discussing, that copy only exists as long as the subprogram does, which 
usually isn't very long.

                                  Randy.